Brad Finstad is running for the US Houise in CD1.

Allen Shen is running for the Minnesota House in HD40B

And here’s today’s song.

Former Trump hand Michael Anton, writing for Compact, offers a bracing view of the various pathologies of Trump haters, whose numbers are legion, at least among the chattering classes. I am going to pull a few quotes; this article is a festival of pull quotes, truly a “read the whole thing” special. But a few of Anton’s observations deserve particular consideration, to wit:

Complaints about the nature of Trump are just proxies for objections to the nature of his base. It doesn’t help stabilize our already twitchy situation that those who bleat the loudest about democracy are also audibly and visibly determined to deny a real choice to half the country. “No matter how you vote, you will not get X”—whether X is a candidate or a policy—is guaranteed to increase discontent with the present regime.

All along the Potomac, you can sense it: oh boy, here comes the hoi polloi. The whole point of the current January 6 show trial is to demonstrate, beyond question, that your concerns do not matter. Stay outta the 202, y’all. The enmity Anton describes began before Trump — before the MAGA hat became the visible headgear from hell, the tricorner hats of the Tea Party were not a source of great amusement to our betters, but rather an unwelcome interruption to the exciting new world on offer. The concerns of those citizens mattered not at all then and little has changed.

The Tea Party did not last; it was leaderless by design and easily coopted and dispersed by the professional Republicans who serve as junior partners in the Beltway ecosystem. So nothing changed. What did change? This time the hoi polloi had a herald, who happened to be a publicity hound from Queens. 

Why did Trump get the gig? Why wasn’t the herald someone more housebroken, like Marco Rubio or “Jeb!” or John “Daddy Was a Postman” Kasich? Amazingly, it was because a carnival barker like Trump was more credible than the other worthies in the field were. Back to Anton:

The regime can’t allow Trump to be president not because of who he is (although that grates), but because of who his followers are. That class—Angelo Codevilla’s “country class”—must not be allowed representation by candidates who might implement their preferences, which also, and above all, must not be allowed. The rubes have no legitimate standing to affect the outcome of any political process, because of who they are, but mostly because of what they want.

What Tea Party/MAGA types want isn’t hegemony over their betters. Rather, they want to be left alone, without the ministrations of those who have plans for how they ought to live their lives. Can’t have that, of course. And if you are old enough to have had friendships of over 30 years, you understand and have likely experienced the following:

People I have known for 30 years, many of whom still claim the label “conservative,” will no longer speak to me—because I supported Trump, yes, but also because I disagree on trade, war, and the border. They call not just my positions, but me personally, unadulterated evil. I am not an isolated case. There are, as they say, “many such cases.”

Kevin Williamson and the NR gang, pick up the white courtesy phone. Then Anton gets to the nub:

How are we supposed to have “democracy” when the policies and candidates my side wants and votes for are anathema and can’t be allowed? How are we supposed to live together with the constant demonization from one side against the other blaring 24/7 from the ruling class’s every propaganda organ? Why would we want to?

I am not sure we can. There’s more, a whole lot more, at the link. Consider it carefully, as we are in a dangerous moment.

Serve:

Volley: Here’s something that should be even less controversial: if you’re going into the job market with skills that nobody will pay you a living wage for, you’re not ready to “adult”.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

When I turned 62, that number really hit me hard. In my mind, 62 is
OLD. It should be retirement age. I should be sitting on a beach
looking at snowbunnies in bikinis. I should be sipping a brewski as
walleyes nibble my bait. I should be finishing the book I started to
write before Covid. I should be taking my grandkids to the shooting
range and the magic shop and the ice cream parlor but I’m not doing any
of those things.

So I’m taking a break. I’ve really enjoyed writing for Shot In The
Dark, the back-and-forth in the comments, but it’s time to focus. Take
good care, everybody. I miss you already.

Joe Doakes

We’ll keep your seat warm for you, Joe.

To: The Hon. Rep. Dean Phillips (MN-03)
From: Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant
Re: Burning Daylilght, Bucko

Rep. Phillips.

You recently tweeted this:

Well that’s great.

But I’ve got some questions.

For starters: you’ve had two years with control of the presidency and both chambers of Congress. Why, 2.5 years into this period of complete control, are you suddenly concerned with jobs leaving, prices rising, debt skyrocketing, the price of medicine and “climate change”?

Did you used to wait to do your school projects to 9PM the night before they were due? Did your entire conference?

Also – as I asked your colleague Rep. Craig the other day – what powers to you, a Congressperson, have to affect any of those issues via your votes?

Yesterday, we noted that Governor Flanagan and Mr. Walz were going noticeably loooooooooonbg on abortion in their socialist media presence. \

It’s enough to make you think that their internal polls are bad enough that they are shoring up their base to try to forestall a complete meltdown.

Don’t get cocky, of course.

But does this…

…look like someone whose big concern is reaching outside her base?

My theory – their internal polling, especially in CD2, is is “engine room on the Titanic is flooding” bad.

10 years ago, when economic times were fairly good (compared to 2008, anyway) and Barack Obama was on the ticket, the DFL went long on same-sex marriage, counting on it (and the big uptick it advantage) to blunt whatever remaining impact the tea party insurgency had had two years earlier.

That year, social issues (and a presidential race) led the DFL to a sweep, taken control of both chambers of the legislature for two years.

The DFL seems to be counting on the same thing happening again:

The Governor, as well as Mr. Walz, have been leading in exceptionally hard on abortion (as well as a certain amount of whistling past the graveyard on the economy).

And they are already pouring money into TV ads.

Those internal polls must be really, really bad.

All summed in one (since deleted) tweet:

I do know who needs to hear this; when someone brings a gun into a supermarket, shoot the security guard and then it doesn’t other people, and no one can lift a finger until the cops arrive, that’s not really much of an endorsement for gun control.

…to figure out how to rephrase something like “the Democrats know they can say any bull crap they want without fear of consequences, because well the typical Democrat is a college educated person, they are ill-informed and gullible” into the form of a “Berg’s Law“.

Because we need it now more than ever:

Literally nobody who matters treats and ectopic pregnancy or a miscarriage the same as an elective abortion.

I never read any of the Harry Potter books, but I had kids of an age where I wound up watching few of the movies.

So I’m familiar with the sport – or “sport” – of Quidditch. In the movies, it was a fantasy version of, for lack of a better description, polo played on witch brooms.

I wasn’t familiar enough with it to know there’s a professional league – presumably sans levitation. At least for now.

But like (it seems) all professional sports, “woke” has engulfed even this supremely artificial “sport”:

U.S. Quidditch and Major League Quidditch announced the name change on Tuesday as well as their own rebranding as U.S. Quadball and Major League Quadball. The groups announced their intention to find a new name for the sport in December, citing what they called anti-trans positions of Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling.

In addition to distancing themselves from the author, organizers hope the name change will give the sport more opportunities to grow and not be inhibited by the trademark for “quidditch” being owned by Warner Bros.”Bringing full creative control of the name of our sport to the vibrant community of players and fans that has grown and sustained it will allow our organizations to take the next step,” MLQ co-commissioner Amanda Dallas said in a statement. “We are now able to pursue the kinds of opportunities that our community has dreamed about for years.”

So, the “sport” wants to distance itself…

…from the woman who created it, in her own mind, from whole cloth, as part of a bunch of fantasy novels about a teenage wizard?

Because she affirms biological reality?

UPDATE: I’d say “in an unrelated matter“, but it’s really not unrelated at all.

To: Rep. Angie Craig
From: Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant
Re: Your Superpowers

Rep. Craig,

The other day, you tweeted this:

Please tell us what ability you, a Congressional Rep and member of the Legislative Branch, have to influence the price of commodities, like gasoline?

Also – you’re aware that gas prices are falling because the market is reacting to the recession that your party is trying to tell us doesn’t exist, right?

That is all.

Most of the hard, empirical realizations I’ve had as a result of this blog started as satirical, sardonic or otherwise flippant remarks that turned out, to my amazement, to be true.

The canon of “Berg’s Law” is the closest I’ve got to a “famous” example.

Less flippant? My ever-more-frequent observation that Democrat politicians can tell “their” voters pretty much anything that suits them, because their base just doesn’t do critical thinking.

Case in point: the Administration apparently wants to borrow a page from Elizabeth Warren, and have the economy “identify” as healthy:

In 1984, the regime released the news that the chocolate rationwas being cut from 35 grams to 25 grams, by announcing that it was actually an increase from 20 grams. Maybe the people knew better, maybe they didn’t, maybe they just shunted the truth aside out of self-interest.

Not sure this is the same pathology – but I can’t think of a better one.

We’re being asked to watch out for signs our political, market and social leadership are thinking about threatening democracy.

In this case, by media historial Michael Beschloss:

OK. I’m on it. Let’s get started:

• Calls to abolish the electoral college, or otherwise make the government majoritarian – essentially voiding the contract that caused smaller-population states that put the “united” in “United States” in the first place.
• Answering calls to tie the Senate to the popular vote.
• Calls to to abolish the Supreme Court, “pack” it with people favorable to the current administration, or otherwise make it “follow public opinion”.

Let’s see to these, shall we?

Last week, after a brief campaign by the DFL‘s noise machine too spin remarks by GOP lieutenant governor candidate Matt Birk out of context, to local restaurants – the nook and Shamrocks, both owned by the same company – removed the “Matt Birk“ burger from their menus.

The petition reportedly got 176 signatures. And the restaurants caved.

I think it’s high time they realized that the vast majority in Minnesota does, in fact, stand for a free market of ideas, where everyone can and should be heard without having to worry about having their livelihoods clobbered by the mob.

The first step of pushing back? What the heck – a counterpetition. If they got 176 signatures? We are going to get 352.

There’s a pretty good chance this is going to be followed by a group of people who like burgers, and who tip well, going down to one of those restaurants just to make sure they’re getting the message.

Go ahead Dash sign up. And pass the link around to everyone who is sick and tired of cancel culture and doesn’t want to take anymore.

If you lelt them babble on long enough, they always prove you right:

By the way – newspaper editorial cartoonists take a test when they’re interviewing, measuring their knowledge of current events, history, and their understanding of the ins and outs of American society.

If they score over 50%, they get a job in the warehouse.

Under? Cartooning.

Steve Sack is gone – but stupid is eternal .

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

A judge ruled some of Minnesota’s restrictions on abortion are unconstitutional under the Minnesota state constitution, which offers broader protection of privacy rights than the federal constitution in light of the Supreme Court’s recent decision.

I have not read Judge Gillespie’s 140-page opinion. Submitted for your reading pleasure.

Joe Doakes

I’m waiting for the movie.

The MLB All-Star game this past Tuesday garnered a rating of 4.2 rating and 7.5 million viewers. Both numbers were record lows, though the game did handily win the night.

Last year MLB pulled the All-Star game out of Atlanta because the state of Georgia dared to exercise democratic oversight of its own election process. Certainly that drove some fans away, and I’m one of them. I’ve paid for MLB.TV for quite a few years, but this year I didn’t, and I won’t ever again, and I won’t watch another All-Star game, until MLB apologizes for its craven kowtowing to wokery.

But, baseball’s problems started long before that. An important catalyst in knocking baseball off its unique place in American culture was the 1994 strike. That strike began in August and wiped out the rest of the season and, most importantly, the postseason.

Before that strike, the ratings of the All-Star game from 1992-1994 were 14.9, 15.6 and 15.7. The year after the strike, in 1995, the rating was 13.9, and it has been steadily dropping ever since. Whether by design or not, the steroid era which followed the strike did bring back interest in baseball, as behemoths bashed home runs at a record pace. In 1998, Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa battled to break one of baseball’s sacred records, the home run record of 61 set by Roger Maris in 1961. The rating of the All-Star game that year was 13.3, and that has never been exceeded since.

Since 2015, the rating of every All-Star game has been a new record low, except for 2019. The ratings of the World Series, too, have fallen in tandem.

There are a witches brew of reasons as to why baseball’s popularity isn’t what it once was. Younger people have a myriad of other entertainment options, and many more choices of sports to participate in when they’re younger. Pace of play doesn’t help baseball’s cause, nor does a decline in balls put into play.

While I never miss a Vikings game, and my favorite sports teams of all time were Larry Bird’s Celtics teams, baseball is my favorite. Each season is a saga. From the languid sun-drenched days of spring training, to cold spring games, through the height of summer, to the crisp fall postseason, the ebb and flow of teams in the standings is a story one can follow for months.

And if an increasingly woke corporate MLB drives away fans like me which it can’t afford to lose, what hope does it have?

To: Scott Jensen/Matt Birk

Please, please, please: if you happen to win the Governors race, promise to release the full, unredacted records from the state’s “Covid snitch line”

Because I want to find every single one of these backstabbing weasels.

People often would send in lists of “non-essential” businesses that remained open or weren’t strictly following masking requirements, according to files from the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA).

Another complaint reported on people for purchasing non-essential items at a convenience store in White Bear Lake. “Customers are coming and saying, ‘I’m bored and needed to get out of the house.’ They buy lottery tickets, a candy bar, a soda … those items are not ‘essential.’”

I was about to write“This might not be my better self speaking“.

But I think everybody’s better self wants a chunk out of these people, too.

Ohio Congresswoman Shontel Brown took a photo with the President at a Congressional picnic last week.

Pretty innocuous stuff

But look closely:

Now, the following is purely my conjecture – but notice Rep. Brown’s hand? Securely gripping the President’s hand?

Preventing it from wandering God only knows where else?

I’m going to start watching other women’s photos with President Brandon – because i’ll bet dollars to donuts the White House communications people are scrambling on ways of keeping the President’s hands off women, and his nose out of their hair.

One day, we’ll see a photo of Amy Klobuchar holding the President in a half nelson during a selfie.

Mark my worlds – this is one of those jokes that will turn out to be real, one day.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emailed in re the Indiana mall shooting, and the Good Guy with a Gun that ended it:

Holy crap! Nice shootin’, Tex.

Seriously.

OK, first things first: having to shoot someone in self-defense is the second-worst possible outcome to a very bad situation.

With that out of the way?

To elaborate on Joe – within fifteen seconds of the demented troglodyte [spree killers seek fame, so I won’t name him] starting a shooting spree where he killed three people, and clearly intended to kill as many people as possible, 22 year old good samaritan and good guy with a gun Elisha Dicker moved his girlfriend to safety, and then engaged the murderer, firing ten shots, hitting the would-be spree killer eight times.

At a range of 120 feet. With a handgun.

While under life-or-death stress.

That is incredibly impressive.

And just try to find the story in the mainstream media.

That, as usual, isn’t nearly as depressing as some of the other responses from leftyworld on social media:

• “If ‘good guys with a gun’ were of any use, they’d kill the bad guy before they killed ANYONE'”
• “Ack-shyu-ally, good samaritans are *only* non-violent. If he were a *real* good samaritan, he’d have only carried a first aid kit.”
• “Wouldn’t it be better if *nobody* had a gun?” (I try to ask them how they get the guns out of the hands of the Sapirmans of the world *first*. They never answer).
• “It’s still another person dead…”

Remember – their votes count as much as yours.

Depressing, huh?

The New York Times sounded off with an unctuous “Ack-shyu-ally”, saying good guys with guns ended about 3% of spree killings. That’s too low – but if you leave out shootings that happen where civilians aren’t allowed to have guns at all – schools, government buildings, bars in Florida, churches in Texas – and the fact that maybe 3-5% of the population actually carries even in permissive states, thats a pretty good percentage.

I’m looking forward to doing the analysis on that sometime soon, here.

The list of good guys with guns who’ve ended mass shootings is long, and full of the kind of people this brutally imperfect, evil-riven world needs more of. Dominic Rozier. Nick Meli. Jack Wilson, Stephen Willeford, Jeanna Assam. And now, Elisha Dicker.

The woke mob told the First Avenue “Jump!“.First Avenue replied “off what“?”

First Avenue buckled under the attack from the Woke Mob late in the day yesterday, and punted on the Dave Chapelle show:

The media coverage is, as always, shameful:

“The community”

Well, one community:

Looks like a raggedy little line of 24 White, Overschooled, Middle Class, Progressive White Activists (WOMPWAs), not a “community”.

Remember in the 1980s, when the left used to yuck it up over the purported censoriousness of

the “Parents Music Resource Council”, with the record labeling and other (in hindsight very mild) public moralizing?The left has become Tipper Gore.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Gun registration will not be used to facilitate government confiscation of private firearms.

It will be leaked so everyone in the world knows who has a gun to steal, who to SWAT and who to Red Flag.

Joe Doakes

And in Minnesota, where Carrie permit records are not public information, the antis have already promised to use any red flag law to SWAT Second Amendment activists.

Ask not why we Second Amendment activists are so absolutist. Ask why anyone who cares about their civil liberties isn’t.

There was a “civil disobedience” action in DC yesterday.

For those who need a refresher: “civil disobedience” means breaking the law, and accepting the consequences of that action, to illustrate what one considers a wrong.

Rep Omar was among “several female members of Congress” “arrested” yesterday.

And when I say “arrested”, I mean…

Well, watch the video below. Representative Omar walks across the area in front of the cameras, hands seemingly cuffed behind her, until second :17 – the last second of the footage:

And then, when she’s out of frame…

She raises her right arm.

The “Handcuffs” weren’t even theatrical. They were nonexistant. She pretended to be cuffed when she walked across the PR equivalent of a red f****ng carpet.

Not much in the way of consequences, was it?

The social media uproar was such that even Omar’s semi-official PR flak, Esme Murphy, had to point it out:

Now – if we had some sort of institution in this country, perhaps with transmitters and printing presses, staffed by some self-styled monastic searchers for institutional fact and truth, someone might ask Omar how it is she managed to get “arrested” without ever getting handcuffed.

If only.

On the one hand, I try not to spend much money in MInneapolis. And riding the Vomit Comet, or taking my car, downtown isn’t something I do lightly anymore. Of course, I don’t like to reward First Avenue for their demented vaccine policies or having soaked up a bunch of transfers of taxpayer money to them during the pandemic.

And while some of the best memories of my life took place in that building, the staff and management don’t much care about that, or them.

On the other hand:

There’s a part of me that wants to reward them, in some small way, for packing the gear to offend the alphabet people, while in downtown Minneapolis.

Decisions, decisions.

To: Lieutenant Governor Flanagan
From: Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant
Re: This…

Lieutant Governor Flanagan,

About this appearance, on a local, uh, livestream, I guess?

I have so many questions.

Baaaaaaaaaaahb: For starters: Does anyone really care how you dress? And by “anyone”, I don’t mean “Baaaaaaahb from FRIDley” – although we’ll come back to him, and to there. You’re a public figure. You’re going to get, uh, “Feedback”.

But you are one of the four most powerful people in MInnesota; you are arguably the most powerful Lieutenant Governor in recent Minnesota history, since the Governor only serves at the pleasure of the extreme “progressive” caucus you lead. Beyond that, yoiu’re a member of the political class, from a social echo chamber in you can do pretty much anything you want, without any consequences whatsoever (and, indeed, have done just that). You (and your family) have a lifetime sinecure, on the taxpayer’s dime. You could wear aluminum foil pants and a 2LiveCrew t-shirt, or pretty much anything but a MAGA cap, with complete impunity.

(Indeed – given that you’ve never, not once in your life, worked in the private sector, you are in the very rare position of never having had to obey any sort of conventional dress code, outside whatever rules the MN House of Representatives imposes – and if you had any problems about any rules you had to follow on that steppingstone to power, the record is silent).

So even if some (fictional?) “Baaaaaaaaaahb from FRIDley” dunks on your attire – so what?

Does it affect you, your life, your living, your power, in any way?

Because if not, it isn’t unreasonable to think you’re doing it to drum up some phony grievance, a bloody shirt of phony victimization for one of the most powerful, entitled people in Minnesota to wave about. .

Beyond that?

FRIDley?: I was struck by the contempt you clearly felt for Baaaaaaaaahb from Fridley. I was more struck by the laugn your audience shared with you about the reference.

You seem to feel a palpable contempt for people who aren’t like you and your neighbors in the leftist echo chamber, and to feed off the contempt you, plural, feel for them.

Why is that?

That is all.